Hot, Hot, Hot

The title of this post may give it away, but it is very HOT in Cairns.  The problem is more humidity than temperature.  Cairns is located in the tropics area of Australia, the Northeast.  The humidity is usually around 80-90 percent every day, and the temperature is probably around 85-90 degrees F every day.  We are sweating a lot.  I think of it as good practice for Perth, but try not to complain.  Perth is hotter, but less humid.  We arrived here on Wednesday, and got in around dinner time.  There is a free meal every night for those in our hostel, which is cool.  However, they mostly have the same thing, and don’t give you enough to only eat that.  For example, I have had spaghetti every night that I have eaten the meal.  We ate that and went up to our room, which is very nice compared to our room in Sydney.  This is a 4-person room with an attached bathroom.  It is also nice and clean, and a huge place.  The hostel (Gilligan’s) is somewhat of a nightclub with a hostel attached, which is okay.  We aren’t really into the partying stuff, so we usually just read and watch movies at night.  That night we went to sleep because we were exhausted.  First, though, we went to the mall here which has a grocery store attached; there we bought snacks to eat.

Thursday was another day with nothing planned, so we explored quite a bit more.  The mall closes around 5 every day, so we went back there to check it out and to eat.  The food court was very nice with lots of options.  We then went back to the grocery store and got a couple more things.  Amanda and I made guacamole for the first time since we have been here, and it was good.  We also watched the movie “Daddy Day Care,” which I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it.

Friday was the day we went scuba diving.  It was AWESOME.  I was a little nervous at first because I didn’t know what it would be like to be underwater for so long, but it was fine.  It just took a little getting used to.  We had hand signals and everything that we had to learn, which was cool.  The packs were really heavy walking around on the boat, but not so much in the water.  We got wetsuits to wear as well.  Our first dive was very introductory; mostly, it was practicing being underwater, and we all linked arms the entire time.  Luckily, Amanda and I had signed up for 3 dives, so we got to do a lot more.  The second dive was more independent; we got to learn how to move around by ourselves and we saw a lot more.  I saw a sea turtle!  There was also a huge fish, probably 3 feet long, named Wally that was very friendly.  He likes to hang around the dive sites and get attention.  Our third dive was fun as well.  It was great to be able to swim around independently, not having to link arms with everyone the entire time.  I definitely want to be able to scuba dive again, if I get the chance.

Saturday (today) was spent on the Kuranda Skyrail/in Kuranda, the town.  We drove to a more remote part of Cairns (we are in the city) and took a gondola up into the rainforest.  We took a guided tour around the rainforest floor and were taught about the different types of plants.  There are some strangling figs that strangle a host tree and get nutrients from it, eventually killing it.  There were also these cool ferns that collect their own soil base up in the air and form a source of nutrients for themselves 50 feet above ground, forming what looks like a nest kind of.  We then got to look over the Barron Falls, which was a natural waterfall formed by a gorge.  It was running super strong, which was cool to see.  We then went up to Kuranda, the town.  In this town, Amanda and I went to three main attractions.

First, we went to Kuranda Koala Garden.  It was a mini zoo type area with koalas being the focus, obviously.  We each paid $16.00 to hold a koala and get pictures.  They are super cute, and heavier than I thought.  The koala we got to hold was very used to being passed around, and didn’t really care.  She was sweet.  There was also an open kangaroo enclosure, and we got to feed the kangaroos.  That was a lot of fun.  The second place we went was Bird World.  It was essentially a big aviary with 50 different kinds of birds in it.  There were some huge parrots, and also ducks and parakeets, etc.  They had an exhibit in the back with cassowaries, which are amazing.  They look like emus kind of, but they are a weird blue color, and have a dinosaur-like protrusion off the top of their head.  Sadly, they are super endangered, and the cyclone didn’t help.  Although it didn’t directly affect the rainforest, the winds did shake lots of the fruit off the trees.  This is the cassowary’s main food source, and it will thus rot before they can eat it all.  They might have to drop food for them to survive in the wild (there are only about 1500 wild cassowaries left).  The third place we went was the Australian Venom Zoo.  It was a bunch of venomous snakes and spiders.  It was cool as well.  As we went to leave, the rainforest decided it needed some more moisture; it dumped rain on us for about 20 minutes.  It was the hardest rainfall I had ever seen; it soaked Amanda and I in about 15 seconds.  We got really wet, but it was fine; we were super hot anyway.  Then we took the Skyrail back down and went back to the hostel.  For dinner, Amanda and I made quesadillas and guacamole, which we love eating.  And now we are going to sleep, since it is 23:21.

Tomorrow: Crocodile Zoo and Cairns Zoo, Monday: Travel Day to School!

Koalas, Shark, Pirates, and Three Sisters

Sorry for the delay-I wrote this 2 days ago, but was trying to add pictures that kept failing...This is a very short, brief way of describing the last two days.  It has been pretty sunny, with short rain showers (around 15 minutes or so), which isn’t bad compared to Minnesota!  I feel for you all!  It was probably around 80 degrees here today.  Yesterday (Thursday) we went to Sydney Wildlife World, Sydney Aquarium, and the Sydney Tower.  Sydney Wildlife World is a really neat mini-zoo right in downtown Sydney.  It is filled with Australian animals.  We got a 4-pass thing that lets us into the three attractions mentioned above, plus another aquarium, for $49.00; this is a great deal.  At Wildlife World, they had all the venomous spiders and snakes from Australia; I didn’t care for the spiders.  They also had kangaroos, and they were the first kangaroos I had ever seen in my life (I think).  They were mostly lying down, and I read that they have no sweat glands; thus, when it is hot, they lie on the ground and sleep.  We did see two of them eating, and got to watch them hop away.  Another big attraction at SWW is the crocodile.  They have an Estuarian crocodile there; they are HUGE.  I think he was around 3 meters long-no joke.  He was cool, but I was glad he was behind a lot of glass.  My favorite part about SWW was seeing the koalas!  There were about 6 of them, and they were adorable!   They were all sleeping in their trees, but one of them kept waking up and looking around.  I think koalas might be my favorite Australian animal, if not my favorite animal ever.

We next went to the Sydney Aquarium.  It was a standard aquarium; lots of different fish and anemones, etc.  This aquarium had dugongs as one of their main exhibits; they are fascinating.  They look kind of like manatees, but smaller.  There were also some enormous stingrays that were fun to watch.  This aquarium also had jellyfish and some gigantic lobsters and crabs.  Amanda and I went up in a glass-bottom boat over one of the exhibits with sharks in it; this was really cool.  We got to feed the fish in the exhibit too.  After the Aquarium, we went to Sydney Tower.  It is the tallest building in Sydney, and it has a great observation deck.  We got to see the entire Sydney from almost 2,000 feet up.  That was awesome!  We took lots of pictures, and then went back down to the street.

That night, we went on a dinner cruise on a tall ship.  For those of you not knowing what a tall ship is, it’s essentially a pirate ship.  This was a lot of fun, and the food was good as well.  That night, we were pretty exhausted and headed back to the room, since we had to get up early the next morning.

Today, we went to the Blue Mountains.  The Blue Mountains are a mountainous region (duh) about two hours outside Sydney, with waterfalls, national parks, and the like.  We had to get up at 5:45 this morning, since we weren’t exactly sure where the shuttle was picking us up.  We started toward the mountains around 7:30 or so, after picking up more people.  We first went into a national park to try to find some wild kangaroos.  We saw 4 of them!  We got to see a mom with her joey outside of the pouch, which is apparently super rare.  We also saw two males bounding around.  I was happy because it was a really neat experience and we were really close!  After that, we went on our first hike.  It was pretty rough terrain, although we were technically on a path.  There were lots of rocks and roots to step over.  One person commented that they were only seeing their feet the entire hike, which was mostly true.  We stopped at a few overlooks to take pictures, which was good.  When we got as far down as we were going, we had to go back up.  Definitely not as fun, since we went down about 300 meters or so according to our guide.  We got back up to the top, and had lunch.  I didn’t eat much of it because it was ham sandwiches, and I don’t like ham very much.  The bananas were good though!  We then went to our second hike, which was at a place called Scenic World.  We hiked down these stairs that were originally the path miners took to work in the area.  There were a LOT of stairs.  I was relieved because we did not have to go back up this time.  Scenic World has a number of means of transportation around, including a railway that had a 52 degree incline.  We took that on the way up.  It was pretty intense; you felt like you were falling over the entire time.  There was some cool information about mine shafts and the different plants along the path, which was interesting.  During this hike, we saw a formation called the Three Sisters, which has an Aboriginal story behind it.  You should look it up if interested because I don’t remember all the details.  We got to take a closer look at the formation after the second hike, which was cool. 


We then traveled back to Sydney, and we went to Hungry Jack’s for dinner.  It seems similar to a Burger King, but not the exact same.  We then came back to the room, and Amanda and I threw in a load of laundry so we didn’t have to do 3 at the end of the trip.  And now I am sitting here typing this blog.  We are happy that the Internet works today on our laptops; it didn’t work yesterday for some reason.

Next up: Opera House, Australian Museum.  Sunday-Sydney Bridge Climb!

Lucky

Although most of this post will not sound lucky at all, I think that we were very lucky the last couple of days; it could have been a lot worse.  On Monday, we went up to Kaikoura for whale watching.  We had to leave our room at like 6:00, which was pretty early for us, but we were excited.  The shuttle ride was like 3 hours long, so we all pretty much slept.  It was literally our driver’s first day, so he didn’t really know what was going on.  Therefore, we had to walk a couple blocks to the whale place, which was fine.  We got there, and it was drizzling-ish outside, but it was getting better.  So, we decided to go get lunch at the café and wait.  Our departure time was 2 hours out.  Lunch was pretty good, but not amazing.  The trip before ours was cancelled, so we were a little anxious about that.  Turns out, ours was cancelled too.  Good thing is, we got a full refund for it.  Bad news, we had three hours to do nothing.  So, we frantically looked through brochures so we could do something.  We ended up going to the “Seal Colony,” which only had about 5 seals at it.  There was a hiking trail that we took for about an hour and a half that had some scenic views of the coastline and such.  It was drizzling the entire time, however, which was a bummer.  We got back into town, and Amanda and I went and looked in the shops around.  We got a snack in a café, and waited for our shuttle.

We got on the shuttle, no problem, but then there weren’t enough seats for everyone.  We had the same driver we did on the way out, so he wasn’t sure what to do.  Turns out, somehow our reservation got messed up, and our return shuttle was not booked.  We therefore got nicely kicked off the shuttle, and we walked to an I-site (an information type place).  We asked if there were any more shuttles or anything that day, and were told that there was nothing.  At this point, we all pretty much had the same thought: “Great.”  We decided to book a shuttle for the next morning, and try to find a place to stay that night.  This is where the luck starts coming in.  We were stuck in a city 3 hours away from Christchurch, and had nowhere to sleep or a method to get back.  Luckily, the I-Sites have lots of brochures, and they can help you book pretty much anything.  The lady helping us was super nice and felt really bad for us.  She got us a super nice room in this hostel called the “Lazy Shag.”  We got a private room with a bathroom for only 85 dollars total, which was quite a bargain.  We also got a shuttle that was leaving at 7 or so the next morning, which was great.  We got back to Christchurch around 11, and grabbed some lunch (baked potatoes).  It was very good.  Afterward, Amanda and I went shopping for souvenirs, and found some cool clothes as well.  Our bags are now SUPER full, and are now hard to close.  We are considering shipping a box to Perth at this point, if it will help us avoid extra bag charges.  That night, we did laundry and got Pizza Hut, since we had to leave super early the next morning for Sydney.  Laundry was interesting because it was $2.00 per load.  Wasn’t too bad, except the dryer only ran 20 minutes for 2 dollars.  We didn’t want to use more, so we hung out all our clothes under the fan in our room, hoping they would dry.  The rest of the night, while packing, was a continuous moving-around of clothes to make sure they would all get dry before we had to leave.  Luckily, they did.

The next morning, we woke up at 2:30.  Our shuttle was coming at 3:15, and we wanted to make sure we had enough time to eat breakfast and finish our suitcases.  The shuttle came early, so luckily we were done early.  Amanda and I accomplished quite a feat getting our suitcases to close.  We got on the shuttle, and got to the airport around 3:45.  Unfortunately, we had to sit around for like 20 minutes because the check-in area wasn’t open yet.  We checked in, and then went to go to the gate.  That section then wasn’t open-another 20 or so minute wait.  We finally got up to the gate, and we got some extra food to eat to hold us over until after the flight.  The flight left at 6:00, and was 3 hours long.  We got into Sydney at 7:15 (two hours behind NZ), and went through customs just fine.  We got on a shuttle, and waited for like 30 minutes for it to leave because the driver wanted a completely full cabin.  He was really nice though, which helped.  We got to our hostel at like 9 or so this morning, and went to our room.  Our room here is definitely not as nice-we were spoiled in Christchurch!  We are in a 6-person female room, and the three of us have the top bunks.  We have to lock everything in the lockers in our room, just for security measures.  Therefore, we can’t have anything out, which we are not used to.  Our past hostel was an 8-person room that we had for the three of us, and we used every bit of space in there to spread out our stuff.  So, it will be interesting to be actually living out of my suitcase, and repacking it every night.  After we put our suitcases away, we decided to get our bearings-Sydney is HUGE.  We found out how to get a train to the Circular Quay (pronounced Key), which is the main touristy area of Sydney.  It has the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, as well as the ferries, etc. right there.  We were going to the Sydney Information Centre, but it took quite a while to find it.  In Christchurch, there are signs everywhere pointing to attractions/places of interest.  In Sydney, they aren’t as abundant.  We eventually found our way there, and spent about an hour finding things to do the rest of the week.  We went on a bus tour for a couple of hours around Sydney.  This was good because it helped us look around without having to walk aimlessly.  However, it started to rain about halfway through.  We wanted to go to the bottom deck of the bus, but the bus didn’t stop for about 15 minutes.  Therefore, we got pretty wet.  We decided after that to go back to our room and figure out what to do.  Amy went to get a phone, and we waited for her.  Then we went to dinner, which was delicious.  It was a little pricier than much of the stuff we have been eating, but it was worth it.  I got a pasta dish with chicken, mushrooms, and bacon in creamy garlicky sauce.  Amanda got a Caesar salad, and we shared.  After that, we went to the cinema, which is right next to our hostel, and checked the prices.  It is 15.50 for a movie with our student ID’s.  This isn’t horrible, but it is pricey.  We decided to wait for a rainy day or night where we have nothing planned.  We went back to the hostel, and I am now sitting here writing this blog.  Hope everyone is doing well!  Feel free to email or Facebook me; I am checking it pretty regularly.  Would love an email from someone other than a random club that I don’t want to read!

Coming up:  Sydney Aquarium and Sydney Tower, and a Dinner Cruise on a Pirate Ship type boat! Then going to the Blue Mountains.

Whirlwind

The last couple of days have been super fun, intense, and busy-sort of like a whirlwind of activity.  On Friday, we woke up and went to explore downtown Christchurch.  It kind of reminds me of New York City a little bit, in that the streets are lined with shops.  However, it is not very congested with people or cars, which is nice.  The intersections make weird noises when it is time for you to use the crosswalk, which took a little while to get used to.  There are lots of street performers on the weekends, which is neat.  We saw Christchurch Cathedral, which is really neat-lots of stained-glass windows and the like.  It is right downtown, in the center of everything.  We walked to the Arts Centre, which is a couple of old buildings refurbished to hold small arts and crafts type stores.  We would have had trouble pulling my mom out of there if she were here!  Amanda and I each bought a book in one of the stores.  We then kept walking and found Christchurch’s Botanical Gardens.  There will be some pictures on my Facebook from there, but here’s one for an example:

The gardens are a huge sprawl of flowers, humongous trees, and open grassy areas.  We only walked like 1/3 of the way in because we were tired from all the walking.  We then went and got bus cards to use for the rest of the week.  They are a lot faster to use when loading the bus, and cost less than paying cash.  This is excellent because we use the bus at least 2x a day, and it saves us almost a dollar each time.  We then went back to the hostel because we were going on the Tamaki cultural experience that night.  We got back to the hostel, and we had a note on our doorknob telling Amy that we needed to call Tamaki.  We did and Amy was told that the night was cancelled because of “things under the ground.”  What that means, we are not so sure.  We were kind of bummed, but glad that we would be getting a full refund.  So, we decided to go to a fancy restaurant down on the pier of the beach called “Salt on the Pier.”  Amanda got a surf and turf, which was a steak with shrimp and scallops, and I got seafood chowder.  It was very good.  The presentation was fantastic-they made a tower of au gratin-type potatoes which they placed the steak on.  And, it tasted delicious.  We then decided to walk to the end of the pier.  This was quite a feat since the wind was blowing very hard.  There was a guy exercising running to the end and back, which we thought was impressive.  There were lots of people fishing off the pier; most were catching crabs and the like.  When we got to the end, we walked back right away because it was very cold due to the wind (okay, not too cold compared to Minnesota).  Then we went back to the room and emailed the various activities that we planned on doing in Cairns (pronounced cans).  There was a huge cyclone that went through the area Cairns is in, so we wanted to make sure the things that we are going to do (more on that later) were still available.  They are, which was a relief.  We then went to sleep because we were exhausted from walking so much.

Saturday (yesterday) was PACKED with activities, and it was very exhausting, yet fabulous.  We woke up that morning around 9 or so, and took off into town for the shuttle to the Antarctic Centre.  Christchurch is known as the “gateway to Antarctica” or something similar to that; the United States has their Antarctic Exploration Program’s headquarters in Christchurch.  Thus, there is a tourist attraction all about Antarctica.  Some of the activities that were there include a snow and ice experience room (not unlike a 0 degree day standing in the bus line at St. John’s), a penguin exhibit (where they have penguins that were taken from the wild because they were injured), a 4-D experience ride (getting sprayed in the face 7 times was about 6 too many), and a ride in an Antarctic vehicle.  The ride was super intense-comparable to a super-shaky roller coaster.  The vehicle was amphibious, so it went under-water as well, which was neat.

We got back from the Antarctic Centre around 16:00 or so, and then walked around a little more.  The day before, we found an advertisement for the Christchurch Gondola.  So, we decided to do that.  It was a gondola that brought you up about 2,500 feet from the city.  See the video on our blog, as well as pictures on Facebook.  When we went back, we found a place for dinner, at which I had nachos and Amanda had wedges.  Apparently the thing to do here is to put sweet chili sauce on your potatoes-it’s everywhere.  The food was humongous, and we probably should have shared something.  However, it was cheap, which we like.  We then waited around a bit, watching rugby on TV there.  I still don’t understand it, after watching 3 or so games, and somewhat knowing what was going on.  We then walked past the Botanic Gardens about 4 more blocks to Hagley Park, where they were holding “Classical Sparks.”  This was essentially Music in Plymouth, Christchurch style.  For those of you who don’t know what Music in Plymouth is, “Classical Sparks” was a symphony orchestra concert outside, where everyone brings blankets and lawn chairs, sees everyone they know, and there are food and drink places all around the outside.  It was a lot of fun, although it was sprinkling for quite a while.  The orchestra played Ride of the Valkyries, Beethoven No. 5, Mo.1, a Mozart piece I recognized from Music Theory (forgot the name).  But, I will never forget the arranged version for orchestra, choir, and military band-with a lead singer-of The Final Countdown.  That was awesome!  We had to unfortunately leave before the second half started, since we were going to an improv show.  I was bummed, but it was well worth leaving.  The show we went to started at 22:00, which was later than we had stayed up the previous two nights.  It was hilarious-I was laughing the entire time.  It was similar to “Whose Line is It Anyway.”  However, there was one bit I particularly liked where they did a ballet.  The two suggestions yelled were volcano and turtle, so they did a ballet about these two things.  It was hilarious to watch them act out ballet moves while trying to be turtles.  It was made even more hilarious by the drunken people in the audience.  That ended around 23:30, which was SUPER late for us.  We did get to see what happens in town on the weekends late at night; basically a bunch of teenagers hanging out and walking around.  We got on our bus at midnight, and were completely exhausted.  My bed was so awesome that night.

Today (Sunday) was my favorite day thus far, although it was definitely the hottest.  It was about 36 Celsius, however that converts.  We guessed around 90 or so.  There was a breeze, but not as much as we have been used to.  It was also very humid; needless to say, we sweated through our shirts and sunscreen pretty easily.  We went to Orana Wildlife Reserve today, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Christchurch, and not Auckland (the other big city in NZ).  Check out their website for the basic info. (Seriously do, it is awesome).  We did two “encounters” while we were there (paid extra things to do).  First, we walked around for quite a bit to see the animals.  We saw tigers, one of which jumped to a piece of meat way up on a stump (probably about 10 ft tall) from another stump (about 15 ft away); this was awesome!  We also saw cheetahs, rhinos, lemurs, gibbons, ostriches, emus, etc.  There was a kiwi exhibit, but the kiwi didn’t come out when we were there (twice) L.  The first encounter we went on was the Lemur Encounter.  We got to go into their exhibit and hand-feed them bananas!  It was awesome, see picture:

The second encounter was the Lion Encounter.  What this is essentially is a big cage strapped to the end of the truck that you go out into the exhibit in.  One lion was on top of the cage the entire time, and the others were around the sides.  The keepers fed the lions through the fencing; it was really unbelievable.  I was probably 3 feet from a pack of lions!  See picture:

It was super exhausting to be out so long in the heat and sun, so we were pretty tired by 16:00.  We went back to our hostel, and got food at a fish and chips place.  Chips are French fries, and they are excellent.  However, we ordered way too many (who knew a scoop of chips was like 3 cups?) and have some leftovers to eat later.  And now, I am typing my blog.  We might watch a movie or something.  The nice thing about the hostel is they give us free Internet-up to 20MB a day.  We have used (between the 3 of us) about 6MB so far.  So, I will be uploading pictures and the like on Facebook tonight probably.  Watch for those. Also, check out our video blog (link is in an earlier post on here)-there will be a couple videos up to watch!  Cheers!

Looking ahead: Whale watching tomorrow, then Tuesday a scenic railroad trip across the entire South Island, leaving Wednesday for Sydney!

Interesting

I think interesting is the best way to describe the past couple of days.  My internal clock is super messed up from all the traveling, so I haven’t really been hungry, just eating when it’s the right time here in New Zealand.  New Zealand is 19 hours ahead of Minnesota, so it’s not a horrible time change, just weird.  Essentially, how we calculate it is from New Zealand, we just add 5 hours to get Minnesota, and then think a day behind.  We completely missed February 2^nd in the mix of flying around, which was weird.  Trying to explain how long it took to get to New Zealand is very difficult-for us, it was around 30 or so hours of traveling for us, but not thanks to crossing the date line.

We left our house at 8:30am on the 1^st, and sat through an hour of traffic to get to the airport.  It was icy and wet, and also conveniently rush hour.  We were excited to be driving around in the slush for the last time for a while (around 7-8 months).  We got to the airport and checked in and everything, which was low key.  After that, we sat by the gate, waiting for flight 1 to Phoenix, which left around 11; there were two 50 year old women sitting behind us discussing whether they wanted to get “maggies” or “bookies” for the plane.  We had to try very hard not to laugh (they were American).  Matt and Gavan, two guys from our trip, flew over with us.  It was fun to have someone to talk to in the airports and stuff.  This flight got in later than expected, which was fun for the four of us because we only had an hour in between.

Flight two left around 14:30 or so, and we touched down at 13:45 from flight one, I think.  The annoying part was waiting for everyone in front of us to get off the plane.  Amanda and I had not eaten lunch yet, and didn’t really have time in between, like we thought we would originally.  Thus, we grabbed food quick in the airport, and walked fast to our gate.  The man sitting next to us on the plane was not very happy because we were the annoying people eating on the plane; I’m sure he got over it.  He kind of looked like Richard from LOST, but Amanda doesn’t think so at all.

We got to LAX around 15:30 or so, and our flight didn’t leave until 21:40.  There was beautiful weather in LA, and there was quite a long walk to the terminal our flight was going to leave from, so that definitely helped.  We said goodbye to Matt and Gavan, as they were taking a different flight and traveling separately from us.  Amanda and I decided to change into shorts since we were too hot!  It’s nice to say that in February.  We checked our bags, and went through security.  I got stopped in security because they thought my laptop cooling pad was an explosive device-that was not fun.  I had to get patted down and everything, although it ended up being a false alarm.  We were somewhat anxious for our 15 hour flight to Australia because we had never been on a flight that long before, and don’t sleep well on planes in general.  However, it was a really neat experience.  We met up with Amy and got some food in the airport, then sat around for a couple of hours waiting to get on the plane.

The airline we went on, V Australia, is a newer airline.  The plane was humongous-over 60 rows and 9 seats across.  Each seat got its own entertainment center, and the lights on the plane changed colors, from pink to blue to green.  It was really neat.  The flight attendants were super nice too.  We were somewhat confused as to when we would get food because it said dinner and breakfast included.  The dinner came at like 23:00, which was a little unexpected.  It was okay, but I wasn’t hungry.  It was hard to fall asleep on the plane because of the cramped space and such, so I didn’t get much sleep at all.  Maybe like 2 hours or so.  I watched 4 movies on the plane, and two TV shows.  The movies were Red, Toy Story 3, The Social Network, and Life as We Know It.  I recommend all of them; I picked good ones.  I do not see, however, why The Social Network should win Best Picture; it wasn’t amazing.  After watching my 2^nd movie, I tried to fall asleep, to no avail.  I finally went on my entertainment center and found “Zen” music, and they had some meditation-type things on there; they helped, although not sure if I ever did fall asleep.  It was amusing, though, to be up when everyone else wasn’t.  One of the flight attendants went around and sprayed this lemony fragrance everywhere.  I am not sure if that was because we all smelled, or to help everyone sleep, or what.  It reminded me of the people that spray Hollister cologne outside their store and on all their clothes.  We got in from the long flight an hour early, which was good and bad.  It was good because I wanted to get off the plane, but bad because we had more time to wait for the next plane.  We got in at 7:00 to Melbourne, which was 14:00 in Los Angeles (again, more internal clock problems).

 Our flight left for Christchurch, NZ at 9:40 or so, and we got in at 15:00ish.  When we finally arrived, we had to go through customs, which was not bad at all.  They had to take a second look at Amanda’s Oreos because the box looked like a cigarette box in the scanner.  That was pretty funny.  We left the airport and got on our shuttle, and made it to the hostel around 17:00 or so.  We had to go to the ATM because they would only accept cash, which was interesting because it was quite a large amount to ask for all cash.  The first room they put us in was a mixed gender with a bunch of beds-not what we reserved.  We are currently in an 8-person room, with only 3 of us.  It is quiet and nice, except there isn’t a window.  We then went to Subway for dinner because it was one of the only places open.  We are like a block from the beach, so everything around here it seems closes at 16:00 when everyone leaves.  We walked around and found the beach, but it was super windy, so we didn’t stay too long.  It is really awesome here, even though it was kind of a rainy/windy day.  We then went back to the hostel and showered, and are going to bed soon-around 21:00 our time.  We are all exhausted, but want to go explore some more tomorrow.  Will try to check in again sometime in the next couple days.  Coming up:  tomorrow-Tamaki cultural experience, as well as exploring town; Saturday-might go to the Antarctic Experience center.